Articles by Michael Anderson

Hearts of Iron III: Mac Game Review

Strategy games have become entrenched as a core genre for PC gamers in recent years, which has caused the genre to adapt to the expanding audience. For some this has allowed entry to the massive world of RTS games for the first time, but veterans of the genre sometimes feel that their hardcore grognard needs are being ignored – particularly those who choose to play games on a Mac. Don’t worry, guys, Paradox has your back – Hearts of Iron III is a game with a steep learning curve that will reward the investment of tons of hours learning the…

Editorials, Game Diary

2009 Portable Game Sales Numbers – What Does It Mean for the iPad?

Back in September of 2009, when Apple launched the 3rd generation iPod Touch and touted the gaming capabilities of the system, I expressed concerns about what this new ‘everything under $10’ business model might mean to the $30 – $60 gaming industry. While we don’t have any long term results yet, analysts at Flurry have tried to piece together some sort of story about what trends we can get from comparing 2009 sales to 2008. And put simply, what is good news for Apple’s gaming aspirations is bad news for Sony’s beleaguered handheld and a shot across the bow of…

Game Diary, Reviews

Korg DS-10 Plus Nintendo DS App Review

I adamantly refuse to call Korg DS-10 Plus a ‘game’, despite it being a cartridge for the Nintendo DS. Read on to find out why! The Hype: KORG DS-10 Plus is an enhanced version of the revolutionary KORG DS-10 synthesizer software that was released to critical and retail acclaim for Nintendo DS in late 2008. In this new release the original KORG DS-10 music-creation software, which combined the superior interface of the Nintendo DS with the functionality of the famous MS-10 synthesizer, has been optimized to essentially double the power of the original when used with the Nintendo DSi. *…

Game Diary, Reviews

Nox (2000, RPG): The Netbook Gamer

I really can’t even remember how I came across Nox at first, but I know it was in late 2004 when I bought the European release of Kult: Heretic Kingdoms. At the time I remarked that the games were similar – somewhat small in scope, but very successful in accomplishing what they try to do. Nox is an isometric action-RPG released in early 2000, which means that it was immediately labeled as a ‘Diablo Clone’. In many ways it fits that description – but it offers much more depth than any of the traditional action-RPG’s, making it more similar to…

Game Diary

The Power of HTML5 & WebGL: Quake II in a Web Browser!

There has been much discussion about HTML5 versus Flash recently, so it was very interesting to see this: Some engineers at Google have taken some of their ‘play time’ and tried to see how well a non-plug-in based video game would play in native HTML5 with WebGL support. They chose Quake II, the groundbreaking 1996 first-person shooter, which is now open source and already has a Java port. As noted on the Google Web Toolkit Blog: We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and…

News

Verizon Finally Updates Motorola Droid to 2.1 … so who cares?

Image courtesy of TalkAndroid Operating System updates are a funny thing – we just got one from Apple the other day (OS X 10.6.3), but how many folks who have applied it really even know what it does? Sometimes it is just the fact that something is known to be coming that builds anticipation – even if we don’t really know what we’re waiting for! With that in mind, I woke up to find that my Droid had downloaded the 2.1 update and was ready to install. I knew this was coming – but had already said I wouldn’t believe…

Music Diary, News

Cool Mashup – ‘What a Wonderful World’ Meets Death Metal

Image courtesy of Wilson-Benesch I have been a huge fan of Louis Armstrong for decades, even having ‘What a Wonderful World’ as the dance I did with my mother at my wedding. The song was a huge hit for Satchmo at the end of his legendary career, and was re-released upon his death in 1972, as well as gaining huge success as a featured song from 1987’s movie Good Morning Vietnam. It has remained one of the top selling songs in the jazz store on iTunes, and is one of those songs that quickly fins fans across the generations. The…

Music Diary, News

Herb Ellis, An Accessible Jazz Guitar Great, Dead at 88

Image courtesy of Wikipedia Think back to the first time you met a ‘big celebrity’ – not a sighting in a massive crowd, or perhaps getting an autograph scrawled on whatever you could grab, but when you had some actual human contact with someone considered a legend in their field; contact in the form of sharing kind words, having that person take an interest in you as a person and sharing some of their wit and wisdom. For me, that person was legendary jazz guitarist Herb Ellis, who died Monday night at the age of 88. When you’re a kid…

Game Diary

Nintendo DSi XL Released … DSiWare Takes Another Hit

Image courtesy of VGBlogger I know I haven’t talked much about the recently released Nintendo DSiXL … well, that is because it is a DSi that is bigger, and I already did a DSi Review last year. There have been plenty of other reviews, but today from GameStop there was some news that should make owners of existing DSi systems take pause if they are considering buying an ‘upgrade’: You cannot take your DSiWare purchases with you.

Game Diary, Reviews

Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004, FPStealth): The Netbook Gamer

One of the great things about doing the Netbook Gamer is revisiting games and memories from years past. The Thief franchise of first-person stealth-action games touches a couple of memories. I was given the first game as a Christmas gift when it came out in late 1998, at a time when having two children under two years old was pretty much all consuming and left scant time for computer games, most of which I spent on first person shooters. So a stealth game like Thief demanded me to change my basic approach to gaming.

News

Tron Legacy Trailer Is Full Of Awesome!

Image courtesy of FilmoFilia Tron is a true classic in terms of the technical elements of film making, but unlike other groundbreaking films such as The Last Starfighter it maintains an appeal to this day. My kids thoroughly enjoy the film, the arcade games, the GBA and PC games, and generally like the whole ‘into the computer world’ … even if some of the terminology seems cheesy now.

News

Consumerist Counters the NCAA with its own ‘Worst Company In America’ Bracket

Image courtesy of Consumerist The Consumerist website regularly tracks misdeeds by various companies and also our rights as consumers … oh, and some crazy stuff going on in the retail world! Starting back in 2008, they started awarding the ‘Golden Poo Award’, for the crappiest company in the nation! The first year it went to Bank of America, last year to AIG, and now they are getting underway with the bracket voting for the finalists! First up – Walmart vs. Sears/KMart. Who do you think is worst? I’m not sure what else to say but … get to Consumerist and…

Game Diary, Reviews

Final Fantasy iPhone Game Review

What does it say when Final Fantasy VII is released on the PSN Store as a downloadable game for the PSP & PS3 for $9.99 and everyone rejoices, yet when the original Final Fantasy comes along for the iPhone for $8.99 and there is a general sense of being over-charged? Perhaps it is the reality that all business models aren’t created equal. I will talk about the business model in a bit, but for now … let’s explore the iPhone release of the original Final Fantasy!

Editorials

Two Reasons I Hate the Slacker / Pandora / etc Internet Radio Apps

As if by amazing serendipity, I had just started writing this when I read Carly Z’s “Adventures in Internet Radio” talking about traveling with Pandora and Slacker. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of reasons to love these apps! Loads of music, tons of choices, affinity selection with ‘learning’ system that allows you to help the apps do their job better. In fact, since before Christmas not a week has gone by that we haven’t used either Slacker or Pandora on either my Droid or iPod Touch to play music for the whole family, and when my younger son…

Game Diary, Reviews

Return to Castle Wolfenstein (2001, FPS): The Netbook Gamer

Every now and then we come across something that brings us back to the origins of our love for a hobby. For me and computer games, my first real love was Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple ][ in 1981. I have related that story more than once now, since I have reviewed the iPhone version of Wolf 3D, the iPhone game Wolfenstein RPG, and last fall’s franchise reboot Wolfenstein for PC, X360 and PS3. In between all of that, Activision released Return to Castle Wolfenstein in late 2001. In this episode of The Netbook Gamer I see how the game…

eBooks, News

What Does It Mean That We All Assumed Apple Pulled Stanza?

On Wednesday morning, if you searched on the iTunes App Store for Lexcycle, the makers of the top-rated Stanza ebook reader, you would see ‘no matches found’. I was alerted to this on the MacRumors forums, and did my own quick check and confirmed that Stanza was no longer available. While the news didn’t spin out of control as has happened in the past, it certainly raised a red flag – why is the best ebook reader, owned by Amazon, suddenly unavailable on the iTunes App Store?

Game Diary, Reviews

Star Wars Dark Forces (1995, FPS): The Netbook Gamer

I now come to the conclusion of my reviews of the Jedi Knight series (see my Netbook Gamer reviews of the original Star Wars Jedi Knight, the Mysteries of the Sith expansion, and the Jedi Knight II and Jedi Academy sequels) with the game that started it all – 1995’s Star Wars Dark Forces.

Editorials, Game Diary

The Video Game ‘DLC Double-Dip’ Debate Rages on with New Bioshock 2 DLC!

One thing that came along for the ride with the introduction of the XBOX360 is late 2005 was the ability to add post-release ‘downloadable content’, or DLC. DLC was different from the ‘expansion packs’ PC gamers were familiar with as it was smaller and more focused, and able to be delivered much more quickly and at a lower price. The system is attractive to publishers since it allows fast turn-around on the product as well as higher profits, but through the reuse of existing assets; it is attractive to gamers because it allows for frequent and inexpensive updates to favorite…

Editorials, Game Diary

The Two Things It Would Take for Me to Support UbiSoft’s New (draconian) PC Game DRM

Comic courtesy of Penny Arcade I have already talked about the new DRM system Ubisoft has implemented in their games starting with Assassin’s Creed 2 – basically even for single player offline games you need to be constantly connected to the internet or the game boots you out and you lose all progress since the last checkpoint. While I bristle at the thought of such a system, I do accept that publishers need to find a way to protect their property from improper use and outright theft. I started writing this with a few quick ideas about how to make…

Game Diary, Reviews

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy (2003, FPS): The Netbook Gamer

Continuing my love affair with the Jedi Knight series (see my Netbook Gamer reviews of the original Star Wars Jedi Knight, the Mysteries of the Sith expansion, and the Jedi Knight II sequel), I now move to the last game in the series, after which I will return to the first game (Dark Forces) to complete my look at the life and times of Kyle Katarn! For now, let’s look at Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy.

News

24 Secret Restaurant Menus Revealed

A couple of months ago I highlighted the … um, interesting article from CouponSherpa that looked at ’41 Ways To Eat This Year’s Calories In A Single Sitting’. Well, they’re back with another intriguing look at the food world. Read on for more!

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